Ok, as promised, here are a few shots of the complete setup.
Please keep in mind that this tank will eventually become an inwall tank. So nothing really had to be that pretty, it just had to be functional. Enjoy!
The back side of the tank while running. The wife thinks it looks like some kind of bio-mechanical machine, and I said it is!
The sump. Nothing fancy, just a chamber for the skimmer, a couple of baffles, and a chamber for live rock. There's plenty of room to add macro algae if I want to build a refugium down the road.
The lighting structure. This posed the biggest problem for me, just look at the venting I had to work around. The lumenarc is actually hanging from a rail structure so that I can move it out of the way when I need to get my hands wet. Like I said, it's not fancy but it does work well. The T5's are simply screwed to 2 x 4's to raise them up above the closed loop manifold.
I messured like 12 times before placing the tank here just to make sure that I got it right. Over the next while I'll build the walls around it. There will be a door to the right of the tank to access the back of it, as well as the house utilities. I chose this area because I'd have to build a wall around the furnace and HWT anyway, so as to prevent the rug rats from messing around wih everything. They are 2 and 1 year old, so building a wall is way easier than chasing them every where.
